The New Bike
In July 1997, I remembered that I wanted a BMW K75s. I kept seeing
one during a midweek getaway to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We almost had the
Woodberry Inn to ourselves those nights in the Meadows of Dan, but one
of the few other guests rode a beautiful K75s. I knew something was kicking over somewhere in my lizard brain
when my counselor in perplexity accused me of paying more attention to
that bike than I paid to her. I confessed my till-then never mentioned
enthusiasm for motorcycles. I recounted my first ride on a BMW K-bike 13
years earlier in Connecticut. "Dear heart," she said,
"If you've wanted one that long, why don't you just buy one?"
After an absence from motorcycling of almost three years, I set out
on an Internet quest for the perfect K75s. It didn't take long to
find several candidates. One was in San Francisco, another in
Pennsylvania, and a third "somewhere in cyberspace," known to me by a
two-line posting from "Bertino" on a page of classified ads for BMW K-bikes ("K75s...
silk blue jewel" it said, "1,350 miles"). The
bike in the Bay area ("Mystic Red" like the one I stared at almost daily in the window of the Tucson BMW shop on
my commutes to school) had a lot of miles on it for the price, but I found
another BMW shopper on the net who had actually inspected it. He gave
it high marks. The K75 in Pennsylvania ("Arctic White") was practically new, still under
warranty and with very few miles but was priced a couple
of thousand over my head. The third bike, the "silk blue jewel" was a
year older, but it had even fewer miles. It had all the right options
(ABS brakes, 3 spoke wheels, heated grips, hard luggage cases), and it
was priced just right. The AltaVista search engine had called my bluff.
"Somewhere in cyberspace" turned out to be the heart of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and "Bertino" turned out to be a nice fellow named
Herbert who simply hadn't the interest in riding to justify keeping
a sporty, cellar-dwelling BMW any longer. His brother had tried to get him into the sport, talked him into buying a touring motorcycle, but it just hadn't taken. I sent him a deposit,
we worked out the details and logistics by email, and I booked a cheap
flight over the Labor Day weekend using a web-based travel agent.
Herbert and his wife met me at Logan. That's Herbert
and Betsy and their little dog Gomez on the front porch of their
Cambridge residence on the day I handed over the check.
Herbert and Betsy (with Gomez) led me across town to the Concord
Turnpike while I remembered some of the BMW's nuances (the turn signals
are clicked on here, but off there; try not to blow
the horn when you mean to be signalling a left turn; watch out for the
sidestand and clutch interconnect; dab the brakes to turn off the brake
warning lights...). Then I was suddenly immersed in downtown Boston
traffic while I headed west into a perfect New England evening. Enroute to
Concord the traffic thinned, and beyond Walden Pond I pretty much had the
turnpike to myself. When you think of New England, Boston ("the hubbub of the Universe") can be blinding.
It's easy to forget how peaceful rural Massachusetts can be. The ride into
the dark to Danbury was wonderful. The next day's cruise through the
beginnings of autumn in New York State, across Pennsylvania and Maryland
to friends in West Virginia was even better. (We'll leave the misadventure in Virginia for another day.)
Three weeks later, Bob Leach, his wife Ruth Ann,
and I cruised to Asheville. Ruth Ann made the photograph at the
top of this page from the back of Bob's Honda (and I redid it in
Photoshop to include the mostly missing front wheel). It shows the
new bike and its new owner happily zipping along US23 in North Carolina
enroute to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, and home to Cajah's
Mountain, North Carolina.
Message to Amy: Stop trying to sell my bike!